Summary

The most effective help is individual instructions and examples, one or two sentences each, integrated directly into the interface it is providing help on. Upstreams whose software is included in Ubuntu (especially the less-often used ones) should be encouraged to add such hints, through a section in the HIG and friendly evangelism on mailing lists etc.

Use cases

Sally is trying to log in to her GNOME desktop using a different language. She clicks "Language" on the GDM screen, and wonders why Chinese is not listed, and then how she can make her computer support Chinese.

Lu sees the "Sessions" item in the Preferences menu, and wonders what it's for. He's not quite interested enough to look in the separate help, though. So he closes it and never looks at it again, missing out on the time he would have saved by adding Evolution to his Startup Programs.

Scope

All software in GNOME.

All software in main (including OpenOffice.org, Firefox, and Thunderbird).